Ghouls streamed out of the forest and threw themselves at the walls. They clawed at the rough magic-shaped stone, hurling themselves upwards in an unthinking frenzy while dozens of soldiers armed with spears or pikes did their best to pry them off. The tactic met with only mixed success, as the time it took and the number of ghouls assaulting the wall were more than enough to overwhelm the defenders.
Within a minute of the ghouls attacking, hundreds of them were on the wall, though thankfully spread out enough that the soldiers still managed to fight them two on one most of the time. Nym swept his portion of the wall regularly, not really attempting to help the soldiers on his section but instead hacking apart ghouls that were vulnerable while climbing. The parts fell to the ground, where one of the two earth golems he’d created was ferrying parts to the fire pit and returning any loose limbs that escaped.
More than half of them got through the whirling mage blades, but their numbers were sufficiently blunted that the soldiers were able to force the undead back off the walls. They even did it without any casualties and were able to lend support to the units on either side of Nym’s section.
Analia’s tactics were similar to Nym’s, except her palm-sized blades were less effective at lopping off limbs. She could still dismember a ghoul, but it took her several passes to completely cut it apart. Worse, the lack of an earth golem to take care of the severed limbs allowed more of them to get back into the fight. The soldiers in her section had to push back ghouls more often and in greater number, even with the reinforcements Nym’s section of the wall provided.
Nym was considering the merits of spending the arcana to get a third golem going for her section when four ghouls jumped one of the ones he already had working. Prior to that moment, the ghouls had ignored the golem in favor of suicidally charging at the wall, but some hidden wight commander must have realized what the golems were doing and given the order to take it out.
It fought back, but the ghouls ripped it apart faster than it could regenerate. Nym couldn’t afford the drain on his arcana to keep its regeneration going, so he let the golem be torn apart. There was an immediate upswing in his available arcana, which he used to chain a series of undead stunners on the ghouls at the top of the walls. The soldiers there took advantage of the few seconds it gave them to swarm the ghouls and hack them to pieces.
The tide of ghouls ebbed after about half an hour. At no point was the wall ever seriously threatened, and at least on the sections near Nym and his friends, there were no human casualties. Soldiers rushed around with torches, lighting up body parts and throwing them over the wall while mages worked to create more fire pits for disposal. Nym was just one of many mages swooping through the air, collecting burning ghoul arms, legs, and trunks for disposal.
They didn’t finish cleaning up before the next wave of ghouls pushed out of the forest. The line of light spells Nym had strung up were still going strong, and, aided by copious amounts of fire, it was easy to see the undead streaming through the trees in the hundreds. As the wave kept coming, and coming, and coming, Nym got a sinking feeling that he might need to upgrade his best guess from hundreds to thousands.
The wall itself was a cacophony of panicked yelling and orders. People rushed past each other, running to distribute last minute supplies or take up positions against the incoming onslaught. The number of mages in the air started increasing as the army reserves were deployed along the wall to help push back the sudden spike in ghouls. Nym had no idea there were so many mages held back, but he was glad that they were there. Without the reinforcements they provided, he was sure the wall would be overwhelmed.
The ghouls hit long before everybody was in position, and there were a few minutes of utter chaos as the living side of the battle struggled to repel the attack. More than a few ghouls pushed through the line and leaped off the back side of the wall, only to be met by roaming patrols of soldiers led by mages casting spells specifically designed to detect undead.
There was a staggering variety of spells flying through the air above the wall, though by far the highest number of attacks were ones that cut or otherwise broke apart ghouls. Most were made out of pure arcana or manipulated bladed weapons, but every now and then, Nym saw a spell that sank into a ghoul’s body and detonated it from the inside. Limbs would then be blown in every direction, which of course didn’t kill a ghoul any better than chopping it up did.
The important thing was that every ghoul who got ripped part, chopped up, or blown to pieces was one ghoul that was out of the fight for at least a little bit while it pulled itself back together. Some mages were liberal with their use of fire as well, and even as the burn pits were overrun, the entire stretch of land between the wall and the forest turned into one massive inferno.
Despite how badly they were outnumbered, Nym still thought they had a good chance of winning. The soldiers started to push back the tide, and as long as there wasn’t yet another even bigger wave heading through the woods to crash against the wall, it looked like they’d managed to survive with only minimal losses.
That confidence was shattered when the first mage started screaming. He flailed about, flames rushing across his body as he lost concentration on his flight spell and fell towards the ground. Another mage swooped in to save him, only to be shot in the back by some sort of acid ball. The mage that did it flew off at top speed, disappearing into the chaos of battle before Nym could even think to respond.
More mages started screaming as they were attacked. Nym looked around wildly, trying to figure out what was happening. Before his brain could catch up to his eyes, a cry went up from the remaining mages, “Wight infiltration in the mage units!”
They were wearing uniforms just like the soldier mage reserves who’d come out to assist the wall guards, and from what Nym had seen, were using an almost identical set of spells. Somehow, an entire unit of army mages had been killed and raised as wights, and nobody had seen it coming. It would have been one thing for the freelancers and town mages not to know about it, but even the army reserves had been caught off-guard.
Nym saw a mage in an army uniform flying towards him and quickly cast a detect undead spell on it. The spell homed in on the mage immediately and confirmed Nym’s fears. The wight, unaware that it had been spotted, continued its flight, angled as though it were merely going to fly close past Nym instead of coming in for an attack.
Nym smote the undead out of the air with a powerful lightning bolt before it could get too close. The crack of thunder echoed across the battlefield, drawing the attention of dozens of other mages. Many of them started flying in his direction, and Nym saw a dozen different mages preparing spell constructs to attack him. He realized too late that to those who’d witnessed the scene that he looked like the aggressor.
“Use an undead detection spell to find the wights!” he yelled as loud as he could. “Scan everyone around you and shoot down the undead!”
Thankfully, most of the mages immediately took his advice and started scanning the skies for wights hidden among them. Three mages kept flying towards him, two with spells readied and one without. As he got closer, Nym realized the last one was Jharn. The other two circled cautiously as they communicated with each other using some sort of instant telepathy spell. Nym immediately resolved to make sure Analia never learned of such a spell’s existence.
They reached some of consensus and one of them said, “We need you to land immediately and come with us.”
“Why?” Nym asked. “There are still a thousand undead out there.”
“Use of an illegal spell,” the mage told him.
“We’re in the middle of a battlefield!” Nym protested.
“That’s not relevant. Even knowing how to cast that spell is illegal.”
Jharn moved in closer and said, “Can we talk about this after we stop the undead from breaking through this wall and slaughtering a few thousand people in Ebalsan?”
“This does not concern you,” the mage said. “Please leave. And you, land in the courtyard now.”
Nym exchanged glances with Jharn, who shrugged. “I guess let them know what happened?” Nym told Jharn. “Keep an eye on Analia for me?”
The bodyguard didn’t look happy, but he nodded. “As soon as we figure out all of this mess, I’ll get in touch with the boss.”
Jharn flew off to resume his place on the walls. The fighting around them was even worse now as the wights threw away all attempts at subtlety. Twenty or so of them duked it out in mid-air, trading spells with human mages and relying on their superior undead durability to take anything the mages might dish out.
“Can’t believe I’m getting arrested in the middle of all this,” Nym muttered. “Bureaucracy will be the cause of the world ending someday.”
They swooped low over the wall, but pulled up short when a familiar voice started bellowing at them from below. “What are you morons doing?” someone demanded.
Nym looked down to see the lieutenant who’d been yelling at him half an hour ago for throwing light spells over the field. The two mages escorting him frowned at each other and flew down to speak with the officer.
“Sir, this mage used an illegal spell. We’re taking him into custody.”
“Right now? Did your mothers drop you on your heads when you were babies?”
“The law-”
“God shits on the law right now!” the lieutenant yelled. “All three of you get back to work! We’ve got thousands of enemy undead right God Damned there!”
The mages looked at each, shrugged, and flew back up. “Report to the keep after the battle is concluded,” one of them instructed Nym before flying off.
“Thanks for the save,” Nym told the lieutenant. “Do you need anything before I go back to the fight?”
“Just kill as many of the bastards as you can,” the officer said. “And if you want my advice, disappear when the battle starts to wind down. Work your way closer to the forest or something and just follow the fighting out over the woods.”
“Got it. I’ll get back to clearing the walls for you.”
Nym flew off, skimming the walls with his mage blades and hacking apart ghoulish hands and legs. He did a few passes to clear out the majority of the ghouls and hurled the loose limbs into the fires below, but it was only a delaying action. It would take far more concentrated effort to truly push those ghouls back or outright destroy them.
He did it to take the pressure off the top of the wall while he worked his way farther away from the two mages who’d tried to arrest him. Jharn watched him go by and offered him a smirk and a nod, which Nym returned with a casual wave. Then he was past the mage and moving farther up the wall towards where it went into the forest.
There were still hundreds of undead left to fight, and probably dozens of wights leading them, but the army had enough manpower in that fight that Nym wouldn’t make or break anything. He could be just as helpful against smaller numbers of ghouls attacking the walls elsewhere, and more than that, he was concerned about what was going on in the forest. Something had to have gone horribly wrong at the forward bases and outposts.
His friends were at one of those outposts right now.
Nym sped up, but before he got too far away, he heard a man crying out below him. “Geists! Geists on the walls!”
The shout became a shriek so filled with pain that Nym flinched at the very sound of it. He swept down lower and got his first look at the horror show that was a pack of geists.
Ghouls streamed out of the forest and threw themselves at the walls. They clawed at the rough magic-shaped stone, hurling themselves upwards in an unthinking frenzy while dozens of soldiers armed with spears or pikes did their best to pry them off. The tactic met with only mixed success, as the time it took and the number of ghouls assaulting the wall were more than enough to overwhelm the defenders.
Within a minute of the ghouls attacking, hundreds of them were on the wall, though thankfully spread out enough that the soldiers still managed to fight them two on one most of the time. Nym swept his portion of the wall regularly, not really attempting to help the soldiers on his section but instead hacking apart ghouls that were vulnerable while climbing. The parts fell to the ground, where one of the two earth golems he’d created was ferrying parts to the fire pit and returning any loose limbs that escaped.
More than half of them got through the whirling mage blades, but their numbers were sufficiently blunted that the soldiers were able to force the undead back off the walls. They even did it without any casualties and were able to lend support to the units on either side of Nym’s section.
Analia’s tactics were similar to Nym’s, except her palm-sized blades were less effective at lopping off limbs. She could still dismember a ghoul, but it took her several passes to completely cut it apart. Worse, the lack of an earth golem to take care of the severed limbs allowed more of them to get back into the fight. The soldiers in her section had to push back ghouls more often and in greater number, even with the reinforcements Nym’s section of the wall provided.
Nym was considering the merits of spending the arcana to get a third golem going for her section when four ghouls jumped one of the ones he already had working. Prior to that moment, the ghouls had ignored the golem in favor of suicidally charging at the wall, but some hidden wight commander must have realized what the golems were doing and given the order to take it out.
It fought back, but the ghouls ripped it apart faster than it could regenerate. Nym couldn’t afford the drain on his arcana to keep its regeneration going, so he let the golem be torn apart. There was an immediate upswing in his available arcana, which he used to chain a series of undead stunners on the ghouls at the top of the walls. The soldiers there took advantage of the few seconds it gave them to swarm the ghouls and hack them to pieces.
The tide of ghouls ebbed after about half an hour. At no point was the wall ever seriously threatened, and at least on the sections near Nym and his friends, there were no human casualties. Soldiers rushed around with torches, lighting up body parts and throwing them over the wall while mages worked to create more fire pits for disposal. Nym was just one of many mages swooping through the air, collecting burning ghoul arms, legs, and trunks for disposal.
They didn’t finish cleaning up before the next wave of ghouls pushed out of the forest. The line of light spells Nym had strung up were still going strong, and, aided by copious amounts of fire, it was easy to see the undead streaming through the trees in the hundreds. As the wave kept coming, and coming, and coming, Nym got a sinking feeling that he might need to upgrade his best guess from hundreds to thousands.
The wall itself was a cacophony of panicked yelling and orders. People rushed past each other, running to distribute last minute supplies or take up positions against the incoming onslaught. The number of mages in the air started increasing as the army reserves were deployed along the wall to help push back the sudden spike in ghouls. Nym had no idea there were so many mages held back, but he was glad that they were there. Without the reinforcements they provided, he was sure the wall would be overwhelmed.
The ghouls hit long before everybody was in position, and there were a few minutes of utter chaos as the living side of the battle struggled to repel the attack. More than a few ghouls pushed through the line and leaped off the back side of the wall, only to be met by roaming patrols of soldiers led by mages casting spells specifically designed to detect undead.
There was a staggering variety of spells flying through the air above the wall, though by far the highest number of attacks were ones that cut or otherwise broke apart ghouls. Most were made out of pure arcana or manipulated bladed weapons, but every now and then, Nym saw a spell that sank into a ghoul’s body and detonated it from the inside. Limbs would then be blown in every direction, which of course didn’t kill a ghoul any better than chopping it up did.
The important thing was that every ghoul who got ripped part, chopped up, or blown to pieces was one ghoul that was out of the fight for at least a little bit while it pulled itself back together. Some mages were liberal with their use of fire as well, and even as the burn pits were overrun, the entire stretch of land between the wall and the forest turned into one massive inferno.
Despite how badly they were outnumbered, Nym still thought they had a good chance of winning. The soldiers started to push back the tide, and as long as there wasn’t yet another even bigger wave heading through the woods to crash against the wall, it looked like they’d managed to survive with only minimal losses.
That confidence was shattered when the first mage started screaming. He flailed about, flames rushing across his body as he lost concentration on his flight spell and fell towards the ground. Another mage swooped in to save him, only to be shot in the back by some sort of acid ball. The mage that did it flew off at top speed, disappearing into the chaos of battle before Nym could even think to respond.
More mages started screaming as they were attacked. Nym looked around wildly, trying to figure out what was happening. Before his brain could catch up to his eyes, a cry went up from the remaining mages, “Wight infiltration in the mage units!”
They were wearing uniforms just like the soldier mage reserves who’d come out to assist the wall guards, and from what Nym had seen, were using an almost identical set of spells. Somehow, an entire unit of army mages had been killed and raised as wights, and nobody had seen it coming. It would have been one thing for the freelancers and town mages not to know about it, but even the army reserves had been caught off-guard.
Nym saw a mage in an army uniform flying towards him and quickly cast a detect undead spell on it. The spell homed in on the mage immediately and confirmed Nym’s fears. The wight, unaware that it had been spotted, continued its flight, angled as though it were merely going to fly close past Nym instead of coming in for an attack.
Nym smote the undead out of the air with a powerful lightning bolt before it could get too close. The crack of thunder echoed across the battlefield, drawing the attention of dozens of other mages. Many of them started flying in his direction, and Nym saw a dozen different mages preparing spell constructs to attack him. He realized too late that to those who’d witnessed the scene that he looked like the aggressor.
“Use an undead detection spell to find the wights!” he yelled as loud as he could. “Scan everyone around you and shoot down the undead!”
Thankfully, most of the mages immediately took his advice and started scanning the skies for wights hidden among them. Three mages kept flying towards him, two with spells readied and one without. As he got closer, Nym realized the last one was Jharn. The other two circled cautiously as they communicated with each other using some sort of instant telepathy spell. Nym immediately resolved to make sure Analia never learned of such a spell’s existence.
They reached some of consensus and one of them said, “We need you to land immediately and come with us.”
“Why?” Nym asked. “There are still a thousand undead out there.”
“Use of an illegal spell,” the mage told him.
“We’re in the middle of a battlefield!” Nym protested.
“That’s not relevant. Even knowing how to cast that spell is illegal.”
Jharn moved in closer and said, “Can we talk about this after we stop the undead from breaking through this wall and slaughtering a few thousand people in Ebalsan?”
“This does not concern you,” the mage said. “Please leave. And you, land in the courtyard now.”
Nym exchanged glances with Jharn, who shrugged. “I guess let them know what happened?” Nym told Jharn. “Keep an eye on Analia for me?”
The bodyguard didn’t look happy, but he nodded. “As soon as we figure out all of this mess, I’ll get in touch with the boss.”
Jharn flew off to resume his place on the walls. The fighting around them was even worse now as the wights threw away all attempts at subtlety. Twenty or so of them duked it out in mid-air, trading spells with human mages and relying on their superior undead durability to take anything the mages might dish out.
“Can’t believe I’m getting arrested in the middle of all this,” Nym muttered. “Bureaucracy will be the cause of the world ending someday.”
They swooped low over the wall, but pulled up short when a familiar voice started bellowing at them from below. “What are you morons doing?” someone demanded.
Nym looked down to see the lieutenant who’d been yelling at him half an hour ago for throwing light spells over the field. The two mages escorting him frowned at each other and flew down to speak with the officer.
“Sir, this mage used an illegal spell. We’re taking him into custody.”
“Right now? Did your mothers drop you on your heads when you were babies?”
“The law-”
“God shits on the law right now!” the lieutenant yelled. “All three of you get back to work! We’ve got thousands of enemy undead right God Damned there!”
The mages looked at each, shrugged, and flew back up. “Report to the keep after the battle is concluded,” one of them instructed Nym before flying off.
“Thanks for the save,” Nym told the lieutenant. “Do you need anything before I go back to the fight?”
“Just kill as many of the bastards as you can,” the officer said. “And if you want my advice, disappear when the battle starts to wind down. Work your way closer to the forest or something and just follow the fighting out over the woods.”
“Got it. I’ll get back to clearing the walls for you.”
Nym flew off, skimming the walls with his mage blades and hacking apart ghoulish hands and legs. He did a few passes to clear out the majority of the ghouls and hurled the loose limbs into the fires below, but it was only a delaying action. It would take far more concentrated effort to truly push those ghouls back or outright destroy them.
He did it to take the pressure off the top of the wall while he worked his way farther away from the two mages who’d tried to arrest him. Jharn watched him go by and offered him a smirk and a nod, which Nym returned with a casual wave. Then he was past the mage and moving farther up the wall towards where it went into the forest.
There were still hundreds of undead left to fight, and probably dozens of wights leading them, but the army had enough manpower in that fight that Nym wouldn’t make or break anything. He could be just as helpful against smaller numbers of ghouls attacking the walls elsewhere, and more than that, he was concerned about what was going on in the forest. Something had to have gone horribly wrong at the forward bases and outposts.
His friends were at one of those outposts right now.
Nym sped up, but before he got too far away, he heard a man crying out below him. “Geists! Geists on the walls!”
The shout became a shriek so filled with pain that Nym flinched at the very sound of it. He swept down lower and got his first look at the horror show that was a pack of geists.
